Mason begins work on July 1, focusing on program development in advance of the museum’s opening during the 2014-15 academic year.

Mason’s career experiences include serving with independent art museums as well as art museums affiliated with academic institutions.

A specialist in Asian art, Mason’s publications include “Dragons, Tigers and Bamboo: Japanese Porcelain and Its Impact in Europe” as co-author as well as numerous scholarly articles and exhibition catalogs.

In college and university settings, Mason has taught courses in museum studies as well as Chinese art history, and has engaged faculty and students in curating exhibitions.

Mason has been with the Pacific Asia Museum since 2011. His previous professional experience includes serving as chief curator of the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto, Canada, from 2007 to 2011; chief curator and curator of Asian art at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art of the University of Florida in Gainesville from 2003 to 2007; and curator of Asian art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum of Oberlin College in Ohio.

While conducting graduate work, he was a curatorial intern at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and a research intern with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.

Mason completed his bachelor’s degree in Chinese language and literature at Cambridge University in England in 1991, and his master’s in Asian studies and art history at the University of California, Berkeley in 1993. He subsequently pursued two years of doctoral work before taking his first full-time curatorial position at Oberlin in 1996.